Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne/Characters

The main protagonist of the game and series, Max Payne is currently a detective working with the NYPD. Max was a cop working in Hell's Kitchen, but found his family slaughtered by junkies high on a designer drug named "V"; this inspired him to work for the DEA as an undercover agent inflitrating the Mafia and criminal underworld in New York City. B.B., a fellow agent working for the DEA, calls Max and tells him to meet Alex Balder, Max's best friend and DEA agent, at Roscoe Street Station. Max finds out that the Mob invaded the place in order to break into a nearby bank; he also meets his friend Alex, although he is gunned down by an unseen assassin. Having a lead on Jack Lupino, a higher-up Mob member, Max turns into a vigilante and invades Lupino's hotel, taking matters into his own hands. Max eventually battles through the criminal underworld (and meets several interesting characters throughout the course of the story) until he learns there is a government conspiracy within the Mob. He is then attacked by men in suits and injected with a triple dose of V by a mysterious woman, only mentioning the word "Cold Steel". Max traces this name to an abandoned foundry, where several armed personnel lie in wait and defend the position. He then stumbles upon an old military bunker used to process Valkyr ("V") within the facility, where he learns about Project Valhalla, an operation in which Valkyr was produced to boost soldier's morale and stamina, but it eventually failed. Max then learns his wife found out about this and was the reason why she was killed by the junkies. He quickly escapes the building, getting a call from B.B. so he can meet him at a Choir Communications parking garage, who then tries to kill Max with the help of many unknown assailants. Max eventually kills B.B. and then gets a call from a man named Alfred Woden, telling Max to meet him at the Asgard building. Alfred introduced the other members of a secret society he was part of called, "The Inner Circle." Nicole Horne (the mystery woman), who headed Project Valhalla, was responsible for Valkyr. After the government funding was disconnected, Horne continued the project unauthorized. Now, she is the President of Aesir Corporation and "has more than half the city in her pocket". She had blackmailed the Inner Circle, explaining why she hadn't been stopped. Woden proposed if Max killed Horne, the charges against him, including the death of Alex, the damaging and destruction of the many public and private vehicles and buildings, along with his subsequent killings would all go away. Max eventually does so at the Aesir Headquarters by destroying her fleeing helicopter; all of the charges against him were dropped and he was allowed to work on the NYPD as a homicide detective, where he is now located.